


After Me Comes The Flood

by TheWoman (reyreyalltheway)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (idk how to tag the sex scenes bec of weird anatomy...), A completely different take on the term 'force bond', Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Angst, Dark fic, Descriptions of Weight Loss, Dubious Consent, Extreme Empathy, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Graphic Description, Hints of A/B/O, Human Trafficking, Human/Monster Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Monsters are Second-Class Citizens, Neglect, Orgasm, Physical Abuse, Pirate Lord Kylo Ren, Power Imbalance, Protectiveness, Sea Monsters, Sea Siren Rey, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Unwellness, this fic is just an excuse for me to write really tender monsterfucking idk what to tell ya, tw for:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:02:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24717982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyreyalltheway/pseuds/TheWoman
Summary: For indeed, sea sirens were prized not just for their famed ferocity, but also for their beauty in human form.Sirens, when “housebroken” correctly — that is, bonded to their masters — made fine wives, and even finer weapons. Some pirate lords have been known to collect.They are considered almost extinct.aka a monster!Rey and human!Kylo fic, featuring a traumatised sea siren and the pirate lord who's just trying to make sure she survives.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 52
Kudos: 201





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, lads. Housekeeping time.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS:
> 
> \- This world is very dark, context-wise, and as such, this fic is borderline dark fic; next chapter will contain dubious consent, please be forewarned! if you're wondering how dubious is 'dubious', i'll be providing a detailed description in the end notes of next chapter.
> 
> \- That said, i say "borderline" because this fic is basically just the hurt/comfort tag.
> 
> \- Kylo and Rey will never physically hurt one another here.
> 
> \- Tbh the sex will probably be mild, but the context of the world and what Rey has experienced will be heavy. Please mind the tags!
> 
> If you're familiar with the original Little Mermaid by hans christian andersen, this fic follows the tone of that story. but with pirate elements borrowed heavily from the POTC movies.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! <3

⟢❖⟣

The cage door opens with creaking; the sound is a violent disturbance in the damp and darkness of the hull.

“There she’s. All yers, lad.”

The ward spits to the side — a habit, a gesture of poor manners — as he holds the metal bars open for him to step inside.

But the creature that is chained in the hull of the Supremacy must be a mistake.

He observes the smallness of her form, shrouded as she is in near-darkness. There is very little light to see her by, and her long, dark, damp hair obscures most of her. He observes that she is naked, and that she had not been given any clothes or material for cover.

He stands there a moment, unmoving. Simply staring at the pale body curled up on the floor.

“Go on, then; it ain’t had food or nothin’ for days. Silvered, too. S’got no harm left innit, we made sure o’ that for ye,” the ward chuckles, gestures for him to inspect the sea siren more closely.

He steps closer; he can feel his boots squish the seawater-soaked hay, can smell the rotting matter used to keep her alive, but only barely. The air reeks of a death well past its due.

He crouches down, and with the lamplight in his hand, he can see that she is breathing. A slow, shallow movement. He can see one of her eyes in the tangle of her long, bedraggled hair — a swirl of hazel and green that glows where the lamplight hits it. The rest of her is folded in itself, her face obscured where she lies, her dark hair curling around her white limbs, legs and arms curled into her body, paper-thin skin showing orange veins.

He can see where her flesh has started to crack and bleed and succumb to air decay. There is blood on her scalp, and on her wrists and ankles where thick bands of silver shackle her to rusty iron chains. The light curves over what he can see of her jutting ribs and small, sharp hips.

She looked ill-suited to be called monster or man; she is more ghost than anything else. The suggestion of something only half alive, half-faded into the shadows.

He does not look up when he asks the ward: “Where did you find her?”

The ward huffs. “Caught it tangled up in some nets, off the coast of Tortuga. We was in luck, see, it was too small to be a proper siren. And damn good on it, too. S’been looting the shallows, eatin’ small animals. Half starved, it was. The village would’a made a proper kill of it. S’probably abandoned by the clan, seein’ as how s’a runt an’ all. There been rumours. Says it been the siren who ate most o’ Snoke’s goons in Port Royal.” he gestures at her upper arm, “See the marks, eh?” 

There are, indeed, abrasions near the siren’s shoulder, where Snoke would have branded one of his pet creatures. But it is merely half-made now, scabby and flaked where it’s been scratched and picked at. An unhealed wound on an unwell body. 

“How long has she been kept like this.” 

His voice is low, but the ward knows him not, and does not read his tone as the warning that it is.

The ward scratches his beard. “Eh… maybe two? Three?”

“She’s been here for three weeks?” 

The ward laughs. “S’been months, lad. You’d not believe how hard ‘twas to get word out that we got ourselves an actual siren for biddin’. 'Specially one 'at's unbonded.”

The man is silent for a moment. The ward wonders why this particular pirate is so strange, so unenthusiastic about the sale he is privy to; for indeed, sea sirens were prized not just for their famed ferocity, but also for their beauty in human form.

Sirens, when “housebroken” correctly — that is, bonded to their masters — made fine wives, and even finer weapons. Some pirate lords have been known to collect.

They are considered almost extinct. 

But the man who is crouching by does not seem keen about the gem he has at hand. Instead, his fist curls, and there is something deep and dark that settles his breath in his lungs.

The man reaches out, tries to brush hair out of the siren’s eyes, to get a closer look at her face. Quick as lightning, the moment that his finger touches her chin, she bites him.

He does not alarm, does not jerk back his fingers; sirens have human teeth in their landlocked forms. 

But the siren herself is suddenly mortified. 

He sees the way her eyes widen, as though catching her violence mid-way, and she flinches. Her body shuffles closer into itself, huddling into the corner. She starts to tremble gently, but the hazel-green eyes that peek up at him from the mess of hair and sallow skin do not show fear.

They show a wary defiance. 

This siren will die fighting with her last breath. Which would be sooner than later, if he does not interfere.

Kylo Ren grits his teeth down in firm, silent seething, that she was ever put in this position in the first place.

“I’ll take her,” he tells the ward in a voice low enough to lie at the bottom of the sea.

⟢❖⟣

They said he was descended from devils, merciless and monstrous. The wreckages left by the _Silencer_ are absolute: no prisoners, no one left to tell the tale. No survivors to spread lies and turn them into myths.

But it is what they have become, regardless. The infamous captain and his Knights.

They say that Kylo Ren had the command of Poseidon himself. That the Silencer dragged the Kraken by the throat across oceans; the black sails and red flag was a death chariot. "The Black Death of the High Seas", was what they called it. 

They say that any port he landed in, he turned into ashes. That even the sight of the _Silencer_ on the horizon would bring a terrible affliction upon those on shore. That any who bargained with them were doing so at the risk of their souls. 

They say he had no heart; that where this organ should beat, there is nothing but silence. That he fed exclusively on the black blood of sea serpents and leviathans.

They said that he wasn’t a man. That he was half human, half curse.

They were right. On some accounts, in specific circumstances.

So when the hull of Pryde’s _Supremacy_ was found cracked in half against the rocky crags of Exegol in the eastern Pacific, its contents spilled all about the wave-tossed cliffs, a dead crew in the pink, foamy water, the rumour fast spread far and wide that Kylo Ren had stolen a sea siren from another pirate lord, without paying his dues.

And this, according to the Pirate Code, is unacceptable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried SO HARD to just make this a P without P but the P just keeps creeping in and now i have backstories and shit?? so this is more P with a P.
> 
> This fic sounds [like this](https://open.spotify.com/track/3AhsImQhnBKavGQZ2UMHkq?si=cNJClLfkTwCGtvQbEPjKdg).
> 
> PS: I got my inspiration for this fic from a District 9 AU. Please read ["tactile afferents"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23919961/chapters/57518368) by trailingviolets, it is currently one of my favorite fics rn.
> 
> I know there's not much to comment on yet, but comments really help me write stories that I'm still feeling out! :) Comments are always <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRIGGER WARNINGS:**
> 
> Please mind the tags. This is the chapter that earns that "dubious consent" tag.
> 
> Further potentially triggering elements in this chapter:
> 
> \- Graphic mentions of past abuse & torture  
> \- Mentions of past attempted rape / non-con  
> \- Mentions of thoughts resigned to death  
> \- References to in-world slavery 
> 
> That said, please note that Rey is not human here; the tags are up but the differences between her kind and humans are explored as well. 
> 
> Please be safe! I hope I tagged everything well, but if I missed anything, do let me know! Detailed descriptions of the tags are in the end notes, for your references. :)

⟢❖⟣

She wakes to aching;

When consciousness assembles itself, her lightheaded wakefulness feels the sun burn red from behind her shut eyelids. There is a gentle lapping, a stinging on her skin.

She swallows. Opens her sticky, swollen eyes.

She is in a saltwater bath, in a tub. This is the stinging; her skin isn’t used to the salt anymore, and like this, her body feels freshly peeled. She is near large windows, where the sunlight is hitting her and curling her toes with relief. She has not had sunlight in so long.

Her surroundings trickle in slowly; her head is not yet where it should be. A room, aboard a new ship. It looks like the captain’s quarters—

There is a man, sitting at the edge of his cot. Looking at her. 

She would scream, but her wrists are still shackled in silver.

“It’s alright,” he tells her from where he is leaning forward, arms propped on his knees. “I won’t hurt you. Comfortable?”

She understands him, but she does not move to respond.

(Distantly, like a bad memory: a thick, silver bar being shoved into her throat; gagging, sputtering, burning. Blood and spit and bile dripping from the corner of her mouth, and the metal corroding her flesh from the inside; swallowing the pain of being voiceless and disarmed against her will, without knowing why, without knowing what she had done wrong...)

He stands and her skin crawls.

He seems to sense it; he hesitates, puts his hands up.

“Easy, now. I won’t hurt you.”

She watches his eyes to see if she can believe him; she is surprised to find that she can.

He moves slowly. Smaller, silent steps where he could have taken two strides.

He crouches beside the tub that she lies in, keeping his eyes on her face. Not anywhere else.

His irises are hazel; this is all she sees, before she is looking away, her arms coming up around her torso, her legs — these clumsy, unnatural things — instinctually folding, drawing themselves to her, tangling in her mass of dark hair curled as tendrils in the water.

She does not want to antagonise him.

She does not know him, and everything is new and she is not sure if he will be angry if she keeps staring at his eyes. It gives her comfort, to stare people in their eyes, but she knows some humans find that threatening.

He does not seem to mind.

“I was given the impression that you can speak,” he says. His voice is low, gentle, but clear. He wants to be answered.

She does not know why she tilts her chin down in the tiniest nod. She still does not look at him.

“I presume you don’t want to speak, then.”

She does not respond to this. 

She knows that her kind is known for their voices; when they are threatened and must defend themselves, they could lull even the most violent men into stupor, and their shrieks can affect incapacitation or madness.

That is, unbonded sea sirens; those still found in the wild.

Captured sirens are either shackled and gagged in silver, or bonded to pirate masters.

Either way, captured sirens never end up owning their voices. She knows this well.

So she does not speak. Her eyes stare blankly on her knobby knees, scraped pink and scabby above the tub’s waterline. The rest of her is obscured by her hair.

But she knows she is still tightly shackled. She still feels the constant, acidic burn of silver around her sensitive ankles; the delicate inside of her wrists have all but chafed her flesh raw, now numbed.

She might die soon;

He could kill her easily, perhaps even on accident, if he tried to bond her the way men would bond a siren. She arrives at this thought with a resignation; her last breaths would be used to go down fighting. Despite the raw, calloused scratch in her throat, burned by many nights of forced silver, she knows she will spend her strength in a final scream—

There’s a jangle of metal beside her: the keys to her shackles.

“I’ll be removing those now,” he says. His hand comes to pry one of her wrists from where it crosses her body; he takes her not by the sensitive skin, but by the metal around it.

She wonders why he moves so strangely, for men did not often move with such slowness.

His head tilts, observing the ribbing of her sensitive siren skin that is not obscured by the thick band of silver.

There is a deep frown on his brows. She wonders what it is for. If she could touch him by her fingertips, she would be able to tell.

He sighs deeply. The words scrape out of him: “If—” he swallows, “I would have come sooner, if I knew—”

He does not finish his thought. She tilts her head at him; she understands him not.

He catches her eyes; the sunlight hits his hazel. 

It frightens her, how little she understands him. How very strange he is. It frightens her, because she thought she knew men; who they were, what they did. But this man before her… she cannot put together. 

Something like regret, or anger, or sadness passes his features. Then he is looking at her wrist again.

His thumb gently touches part of her sensitive skin, where the silver does not reach.

The effect is immediate: she gasps, shivers. Warmth curls from the place of contact and spreads like lightning across her limbs.

She jerks in the water.

She cannot cry often; her tears are freshwater, after all. But she feels the stinging at the corner of her eyes anyway.

The overly sensitive ribbing on the inside of her wrists is meant for hunting and survival, in her siren form.

But landlocked like this, it is a different matter entirely.

She is shaking, does not look at him. The sensation had awoken her nerve endings, her listless body reeling from the aftershocks. 

That sensitive skin, the shock, the electricity; it is how sirens are bonded.

She shudders at the thought. Her heart starts to beat faster, wilder. 

“I am sorry,” he tells her instead; his voice is rough, scratchy. As though he had his own version of silver rammed into his throat. “I did not—I don’t mean to hurt you. You must believe me.”

She still cannot look at him;

For her cheeks burn, her limbs having had a taste of relief from the single contact point of his thumb— 

Bonding with a human rarely happens naturally for their kind; she knows how it works, knows the pleasure that is followed by intense attachment. The risks that come with being beholden to men. She has never been bonded, but she knows it is something that sirens do not often come back from.

Her legs twist in the water.

“Easy, now.” The man beside her seems attuned to her skittishness.

She feels him move to touch the less sensitive skin of her hand instead; he holds her fingertips. She closes her eyes as his feelings flood her mind through the contact:

They do not belong to her, these foreign things, so she does not know what to make of them: protectiveness, gentleness, fierceness. Fury. And perhaps a little possessiveness.

But beneath it all: empathy. Something kindred that calls out to her.

A loneliness that touches her in places she cannot name.

Her blood curdles; she takes a shuddering gasp at the depth of his thoughts…

The clink of metal.

She opens her eyes and finds that he has unlocked the bulky silver band from her wrist. It drops with a clang on the wood floor.

Her gaze falls to her exposed skin; the ribbed underside of her wrist that has not seen daylight in months. It is pink and swollen in places. Sometimes cracked white, flaky and bleeding. Rubbed raw by restraints designed to burn and weaken saltwater monsters.

She can feel the sting from the sudden exposure to the air; unused to freedom. Unused to weightlessness.

She has never seen her flesh like this;

Her skin is so unrecognisable but now it is free.

The very thought sweeps her up in despair and ecstasy and overwhelming relief.

She chokes, starts to cry, but quickly muffles her whimpers with her other hand; mindful, all of a sudden, how this man might be angered with the sound of a siren sobbing.

Just as the other men were, when faced with her emotions.

She looks up at him, panicked. But he does not look angry.

He looks broken.

There is an ache inside him, coursed to her through their fingertips. She knows not what it is for, but she feels it nonetheless.

“I have to bond you, for the silver to come off. You understand, don’t you?”

Her eyes widen, but only the slightest.

Of course she understands.

But it still hurts to think. And is more than a little terrifying.

She stares ahead, feeling helpless.

Human mating rituals were different from their own, but she knows enough about it. How the men use their bodies, and how the sirens sometimes don’t survive, because they don’t have the natural anatomy for human males. She has seen the bodies of her brethren, thrown out to sea after an unsuccessful bond mating; she has mourned many a landlocked siren, whose lifeless eyes she carried with her in her heart.

She shudders.

Hopefully, she does not survive; 

Hopefully, her weak body gives up. Perhaps she can scream her last, that she might pass from this earth on her own terms. 

Shakily, she makes to get up from the tub;

“Oy, _easy_. Easy, now.” His hand is on her shoulder, making her sit back down.

She frowns at him; he can’t mate her while she’s in a tub. She does not understand.

Men bond sirens to them, by mating them.

She had seen the men aboard the other ship talk about it; she had heard them look at her with lust and hunger and greed. She had felt their eyes roaming her, even in the dark. Even with the threat of a lashing, some could scarce be restrained from trying to visit her in her cage, wanting to take her for their own.

Some of them almost did.

But the man before her possessed no such greed in his eyes;

Instead, there is that brokenness in them that she cannot understand.

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I’ll try not to.”

She watches his throat bob with a swallow, feels his other hand reach over to part her hair gently away from her face. Tucking strands behind her ear.

The gesture steals her breath.

It is soothing, beyond anything, to be touched after going so long without.

His other hand lets go of her fingertips, and she swallows down a pained whine.

He merely holds her by the hand, palm up over his own, careful not to touch the exposed, sensitive flesh. His large fingers curl in the gaps between hers.

His other hand brushes her long hair off of her neck, exposing her gills.

She swallows, closes her eyes.

She knows her gills must look decrepit now; she can feel them cracked, overexposed to the open air and months of going without fresh seawater. Her cheeks burn with shame, for a siren’s gills should be beautiful.

She knows hers are not. And yet.

She feels a large hand wrap itself around the back of her neck, and she would writhe and flinch away were it not for the effect of his thumb on a frayed slit of her gills, beneath her ears.

He rubs a soothing line across this skin.

She gasps, and shakes;

 _Oh_ , but she had not known it could feel like _this_ ;

The sensation ignites heat; she had not known she could be sensitive here as well, but she is, and as he draws his thumb across her gills once more she gasps loudly as a liquid warmth radiates from his touch and her body sharpens with longing, as though awakening from slumber, as though feeling alive for the first time in months.

The pleasure is overwhelming.

She clutches the tub’s edge, fingers curling, her legs kicking out in writhing, as he thumbs her hypersensitive gills one more time.

A moan — long, high, breathy — escapes her from trembling lips, even while her eyes remain shut. Her spine arches; her body feels too small for the desire that grows and blooms and builds at his touch.

With sudden clarity, she knows that this is a different way to be bonded.

Panic rises in her, and fights with the pleasure.

(Distantly, she knows this is another man, taking what he can from her. Distantly, she knows what comes after: servitude, emotional attachment. Or perhaps just a life chained to his bedroom, for his personal use.

She will survive being bonded, and she will become his.

But the pleasure he extracts from her is too much, too intense, and she can feel her landlocked body respond in such heat and want, her hips stutter in the saltwater.)

“Easy— _easy now._ ” She hears him as though from far away. Hoarse words exhaled through a tight throat.

Her breathing grows fast and harried as he continues to stroke her gills;

She bites down and fight against it, for this is the last thing she has.

Dying, as an unbonded siren, was her last hope.

But even this is being taken from her.

Dull want sharpens to a red-hot, savage ache that branches out from her limbs as she climbs higher and higher in ecstasy.

The moan she hears from herself sounds pained; she clutches the hand at her neck, but cannot bring herself to pull it off. 

The intensity, the pleasure, it is _blinding._

She hears a ragged exhale beside her.

“I— _little one_ ,” he whispers, hesitant and low, scraping down her spine as she shivers against the sound, even with her whimpers and subdued thrashing in the tub, “I can’t keep you if you’re not bonded. I am sorry, I _am_.”

She hears the pain in his voice, but it is far away. Everything is shrouded in pleasure; she licks her lips, even as she feels his thumb continue to touch the gills beneath her ears, thumbing the slits, hitting the deepest parts of her there. The parts that pour warmth over her limbs in multitudes, the parts so sensitive, so depraved, her body feels tossed about in a violent storm of escalating, delirious, ransacking _heat_.

“Forgive me.”

With this, he lifts up her unshackled forearm to press the most sensitive part of her body — the ribbed siren skin of her wrist — to his open mouth.

 _This,_ she knows.

The moment his tongue touches her in this way — the most intimate form of contact for a siren — her mouth drops open as her body shudders in sheer, silent ecstacy. She had not known it could feel _so good._

A strangled moan stutters out of her as sensation seizes her limbs, her heart beats wildly, and desire rolls over her in coiling, branching heat from the caress of his tongue on the hypersensitive skin of her wrist.

With the continued pressure of his thumb on her gills;

She cries. From pain or pleasure, she knows not, but the intensity takes and takes and takes, despite her holding back and biting down, she is pulled further and further into the recesses of blind, unwavering pleasure.

She crests against her will; her heart cracking open, white-hot desire spilling into every crevice of her being. Her gasping breaths, the fluttering in her ribcage. Her mouth open but silent, white noise in her ears. The nothingness behind her shut eyelids. The strange, human anatomy between her legs feeling slick with a terrible, terrible loss.

She shakes violently, limbs wrecked, chasing aftershocks. Her hips stuttering, her legs kicking in the water.

It is done.

From losing what little she had left, she starts to cry. 

Her sobs are open, searing, and silent. The heat of her tears burn down her cheeks.

Through the overwhelming crash of heartbreak, she faintly registers him:

He is breathing raggedly beside her. He sounds like he is choking. 

She can barely hear his pleas, his apologies, his broken whispers as he kisses her wrists and rubs her scalp while she sobs. She is too wrecked to hear. 

But she does not hate him. 

For if it were not him, it would be someone else. It might have been Snoke, who would have her chained and useless. It would have been a mass of pirates, a whole crew, using her. Silver crammed in her mouth, between her legs, just like they have done to others. No, she does not hate him. 

He is not why she cries. 

She cries for this was always how it would be; a life rejected by her own kind, forced to fend off for herself, and brought to ends under a man whom she would belong to.

Unloved, as always. Wanted only for what she could bring to his battles or his lust.

She starts sobbing again, as though all the pains of her life have been unearthed by her taking. By her finally being bonded.

The final act to a life she had never asked for.

This time, she wails; but it is not her siren voice. She wails softly, like the human children when they are left alone. She wails only for herself, and her loneliness, and the thousand years she has lived with nothing to live for. 

The man beside her reacts instinctively;

“Don’t cry. _Please,_ ” he tells her, whispers against her when he leans forward to press his forehead against her temple, trembling hands by her hairline. “It was the only way. I'm sorry, I am sorry...”

There is panic in his words. There is desperation and anger and promise. 

She belongs to him now. She will crave his comfort forever. Come hell or high water, no matter kind of man he turns out to be, she will yearn for him.

She wails even more, her breaths heaving, even while she clutches his head close to hers.

They stay like this for a while; her with her heaving, laboured sobs, him with his watery apologies and pleading by her cheek. When finally she has mellowed, he dips his finger in the water and rubs at her temple, where blood must have crusted since her caging.

She leans into his touch, hiccupping the last dregs of her emotions. He senses this, kisses her head in response.

Comfort floods her at the affectionate display; it is a new instinct, born of the bond she now bears for him.

(Saddened as she is, at the thought. To suddenly be under someone’s possession had always been her greatest fear, while she roamed the seas.)

She hiccups again and sighs.

“Let’s clean you up,” he says absently. A little distant. Distraught.

He makes to stand, to leave; a sudden panic flares in her. She clutches at his hand wildly just when he is about to stand up. He looks down at her, frowning. 

She can do nothing but shake her head and grip his large hand with her small fingers.

Something warm passes over his face.

When he kneels back down, when he takes her face in both his hands, it is with firmness:

“I’m not leaving. I won’t leave. I'm just fetching a few things, that’s all.”

His thumbs brush the wet streaks on her cheeks, and it is then that she decides, perhaps belonging would not be as terrible as she had always feared it would be.

So, with a trembling, cracked voice that she forces out of her gashed vocal chords, she opens her mouth to speak for the first time:

“Rey,” she says, the syllable sounding odd with her patchy voice. “My name. Rey.”

She almost flinches at the damaged sound that comes from her mouth, but he does not seem to mind. Instead, his eyes fill with wonder, and there is a softness that cradles his features in the dying light of day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRIGGER WARNINGS - DETAILED:**
> 
> _Dubious Consent_ — In this world, sirens are bonded usually by men "mating" them. Kylo Ren does not have sex with her, but he does bond her by giving her an orgasm; Rey is not aware that sirens could be bonded that way, but she starts to realise it as he's doing it. (The anatomy of sirens are different, so he does not touch her down there. :) Not yet in this chapter, at least...)
> 
>  _Graphic mentions of past abuse & torture_ — Rey gets flashbacks of what she endured on the Supremacy, with how she was restrained as a sea creature.
> 
>  _Mentions of past attempted rape / non-con_ — Rey remembers how other pirates treated her on the Supremacy; not graphic.
> 
>  _Mentions of thoughts resigned to death + References to in-world slavery_ — Rey thinks to herself that she would rather die instead of being bonded into a life of slavery, the way they do to sirens.
> 
> ⟢❖⟣
> 
> whew. that was An Attempt™.
> 
> plot? historical accuracy? worldbuilding??
> 
> idk her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warnings:**
> 
> \- Passing mentions of slavery  
> \- Graphic description of a dead body

⟢❖⟣

Most marauders’ ships are hammers;

Large, heavy, and meant to hit hard. They were bulky things used for force and storage and treasure. Often overworn and old, falling apart at the corners from neglect. Gravity without grace. 

The _Silencer_ is not like most marauders’ ships.

The vessel captained by Kylo Ren looked all the more strange for its length and sharpness. A knife cutting through the seas at twelve knots an hour.

Like its captain, the _Silencer_ lends itself to purposeful precision. 

_Angel of Death_ , _Black Plague, Chariot of Doom_. It was all the same to him. 

Kylo estimates they would arrive to port at Bespin a week from now. Perhaps nine days, eleven at most. 

He rubs his face; grabs for the flask by his belt and takes a long pull.

He’s not often given to rum. A decade of piracy brands him with a grave existence. It meant a few scars and bearing the full brunt of his misdeeds, undulled. Certain things would not do to cheat on; certain things deserve to be felt, is what he believes. Especially by the likes of him.

But today merits differently. The complications he has brought upon himself could use a little dulling...

“Captain.”

His first mate — new recruit; recently defected — joins him at the bow of the ship. 

This Pacific midnight is kinder than the others; the wind is tempered, the water everlasting. The winds run favourably, steady as she goes.

The looming expanse of the speckled sky mocks him.

“So,” Hux says, after a moment too heavy and a beat too long. The unspoken settles like dust around them, disturbed only by Hux preparing a pipe as only a first mate can get away with on deck. He lights it, puffing consecutively, until thick grey tobacco smoke falls out his nose, his mouth.

“I wasn’t expecting you’d burn it,” is what Hux says, mouth full of ash.

Ah, but what a conversation to have.

Hux continues: “Barter for her, yes. You’d’ve severely underpaid and cheated yer bloody arse out of the deal, obviously.” Another puff of smoke. It smells like cardamom and opium, like the Americas and the Northern Islands and all of the East, rolled into the stench of the world shrinking. “But barter, nonetheless. Wasn’t expectin’ ye to fully… incinerate the goddamn _Supremacy_ , you bloody fuckin’ lunatic.”

Kylo does not reply; his finger taps idly against the side of his flask.

“I assume we’ve a plan then, Captain? To port perhaps within the immediate vicinity... Takodana? Or what say you, to the Isles, where it’s best to let ‘er go? We’d make good headway yet.”

Hux scratches his beard, turns to him with false calm behind yellowed teeth.

Kylo Ren returns the favour by moving not one inch.

Stock still, staring into the ocean. Which is all the admission Hux is going to get.

A puff of smoke, and an aggravated tone:

“All do respect, _Captain,_ but what we have here’s forbidden cargo. In case ye forgotten, unbonded sirens aren’t only _illegal_ to keep unsilvered for more than a three-day _,_ but pose a threat of death. The crew’ll _—_ ”

“I am _aware._ ” 

Hux turns to him sharply; eyes widen, a wry scoff. Disappointed, but not surprised.

“ _Fuck._ ”

Another moment, and then:

“Fuck. God _damn_ it, Ren—”

“It was _me_ , or someone I would have _killed_. You, one of the men, I don't care.” His voice is low, steady. Measured, almost practiced, if only to himself: “If someone got to her, if anyone — if Snoke got wind, and someone took her in Bespin, or anyway else.”

Hux rubs his face with the hand not holding his pipe, as though wiping away this terrible circumstance from before his eyes, before he adds, in the tone of all things true:

“You’d’ve gone after her?”

“Yes.”

Hux’s mouth twists. His tobacco tastes like consternation now. He adds, after a puff: “You’d’ve burned it down into a stub.”

It’s not a question, so Kylo Ren does not reply. They both know his answer.

Whether “it” refers to the ship of said siren thief to-be, or the whole port town of Bespin, where the renegades and the scum of the earth partake in the darkest of dealings, Hux does not much care to differentiate.

He knows his captain well enough; _something_ will burn, and Hux would rather not be caught as kindling.

Kylo continues: “They kept her for months. _Months._ I could smell the waste in her cage. She stayed alive while _silvered_.”

Hux takes a moment to ponder this, savour the smoke. 

“Speaks to her size, then. Frail thing, innit?”

Kylo does not reply immediately. Hux only barely catches the agitation that works the tic on his captain’s jaw. The brewing restless, the faraway look.

“Silver poisoning.”

Hux does not wonder how he knows this. Kylo Ren always knows the creatures that end up aboard his ship. Perhaps better than anyone else, even. 

He has always been more inclined towards monsters, more than men.

Kylo Ren finds his calm in a moment contemplating some far point in the distance. And then, after a beat: “She wasn’t going to last. Not with Snoke out looking. Not in the open sea, not alone and unbonded here. We’re not dropping her off in the middle of nowhere. She stays.”

But something rough and course and unpleasant is just behind his tongue; he adds as an afterthought:

“It was me, or _one of you_. It was only a matter of time.”

Hux grimaces. “Better a lashing than _dead_ or gone off the rails _,_ mate, I can tell ye that… No. I s’pose you’re right, there. Would’ve been one of the lil maggots to do it. The Opress brothers, I’m bettin’. Throw her overboard, _else._ ” A beat, and then: “I get it. Not safe for her, or the men. Unless she belonged.” 

_To you_ is implied.

He pulls again from his pipe before continuing, thoughtful: “And who’d have done it’d get more than a lashing’s worth from you, I gather.”

“Yes.”

This, Hux finally understands. His features calm flatly; after the storm is the relief of survival.

Hux chuckles. “Well, _damn_. I believe it.”

He scratches his beard with the hand missing the finger Kylo had lopped off, once upon a time. The penalties of mutiny in the _Silencer._

“Is it done?”

“It’s done.”

This surprises Hux more than anything. “She survived?”

Kylo unscrews his flask; one more pull, before answering: “There are many ways to bond a siren.”

Hux knows him well enough not to inquire further.

There are some things that decently remain undiscussed.

So Hux changes the topic to the real matter at hand: “Pryde was in leagues with the Brethren Court. Stealing a siren and murdering a fellow lord—”

“A _slaver_.”

“Seems to me, you forget what we be, mate.” Hux gives him a final pat on the shoulder before resuming his rounds on deck, smoke in hand. “We’re all pirates here. Bound by Code. They’ll be coming for ye.”

Kylo remembers the creature in the tub, in his quarters. How she is incredibly small for a siren. He remembers the ward’s words: _S’probably abandoned by the clan, seein’ as how s’a runt an’ all._ He remembers the fragile, green-flecked life hidden behind her eyes, about to sputter out.

He remembers her torn sobs in the aftermath. And her eyes.

Never has he hated himself more.

And yet.

A fearsome loneliness stitched her skin and bones together. He knew it well; it is this same thread that tethers him to existence. And perhaps, tethers him to her.

It is not a pause, as much as it is a deliberate delay, before he answers Hux:

“Let them.”

⟢❖⟣

_She dreams of water._

_The vast and empty fade of the ocean, spread out before her: the deep blue infinity, the chalky murks of an engulfing darkness. A deep, shadowed cold._

_The nights, days, years of roaming._

_The utter, crushing emptiness of living without._

_No clan, no family. No one. And a gaping hole instead; a place inside her where the longing has fermented._

_How often had she sought comfort in other creatures, in lieu of finding comfort from her own kind?_

_She would go, move from tide to tide, befriending any living thing that would let her touch them. From the bearded seals of the Northern Shores, to the Leviathan clans of the deep Atlantic. She yearned. And she suspects it does something to the mind, not to have others around._

_(She learned fast, to not to visit the shallows, to keep away from the humans and their nets and barnacled ships. Their dumped cargo and their island settlements and their ports. Their chains and the deep gashes their anchors made, dragged against the reefs.)_

_Fractures of sunlight filter down. She feels the warmer surface of the sea just above her head, feels a kind of contentment._

_Until she sees a siren is dropped into the water before her;_

_A splash of white foam and bubbles, but she is dead._

_Her body smells of stiffness; her landlocked form remains, and her two legs bear bruising and lashes as she floats down, down into the dreary depths…_

⟢❖⟣

She wakes up from the nightmare;

When she opens her eyes, she feels it to be nighttime.

The room is very dark, but she can see clearly that he is not around.

Panic. She starts to panic.

(The dead siren’s open eyes, yellow-rimmed before her; the terror in them, lashes fanned out, mouth open as gravity sucked the body slowly into the ocean’s grave, in her mind’s eye. She knows this is what happens to her kind, when their human masters are displeased with them. And yet, sometimes, even death is a mercy…)

He is not around. Her master is not around.

And it is _terrifying._

It is with this fear that she realises he did not give her his name.

(Perhaps she had displeased him, and so kept his name from her; perhaps she had done something, perhaps she should not have fallen asleep so easily after he had unshackled her limbs and left the room; bile rises up as her throat constricts, her gills vibrating under stress, her heart beating wildly, unused to such emotions.)

Without a name, she starts making loud noises—a loud groan, a low whimper; the panic makes human words impossible to remember. For she often spoke only through touch and sounds that traveled underwater.

Without the language coming to mind, all she has are her sounds. Loud, wordless, and desperate.

Within mere moments, he is bursting through the door.

It is too dark for him, but not for her; she sees the way he fumbles forward, he bumps his shin against the edge of her tub and curses, crouching quickly anyway, his hands blindly groping for her.

“What is it? What happened?” he asks, clumsy fingers looking for her face, her shoulders. Feather-light touches against her brows, her cracked lips. Her hair, her ears. His knuckle soothes against her jaw.

Her fingers wrap around his wrist, and she is surprised by his feelings:

A panic as well. 

She finds the human words as they filter through a haze of relief his presence brings her: “Nothing,” she tells him. “You left.”

( _I dreamt of death. I feared you left. I fear you will throw me away...)_

At this, he breathes a sigh. Relief as well. 

She sees an orange-haired man come in through the open door, but sensing no danger — and barely seeing anything in the dark anyway — he quickly scuttles out, and closes the door behind him.

Such strangeness, these men are.

He bumps his head against her temple. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”

“Name,” she says, words coming to her one by one. “I don’t… your name. I don’t know.”

His breath smells like spice and rum when he breathes a chuckle that rustles the hair by her cheek.

She smiles; his thumb brushes the dip in the corner of her mouth, and he smiles as well.

“Kylo Ren.”

 _Kylo Ren._ She runs the letters through her mind, tests the syllables at the back of her tongue.

“Ky-Lo Ren,” she says slowly. Her voice is still scratchy.

“That’s right, love.” She doesn’t understand his strange pleasure that tickles through her fingertips. “That’s the name. Now, to sleep. You need the rest.”

But he says this as he stands up and she cannot help it; she catches his hand, pulls on his fingers.

“ _No,_ ” she breathes out, flinching suddenly, and she lets go of him and deflates in her seawater tub, for who is she to tell her master what he should do?

He can leave, if he wants.

(The threat of his displeasure nags at the base of her neck. It tickles; a foreign, finicky thing that grips her breathing and does not let go. Her bond for him flares; she hates it. She hates how much it changes her mind, to think of him always.)

She swipes at her eyes. Crying is very painful, but she cannot help it. 

At the sound of her sniffle, he seems to stiffen, but only a moment before he hesitantly crouches back down.

He starts to shush her, arms hovering over her, testy and unsure. He finally settles with an arm coming around her shoulders as he gently, softly, presses his mouth on her head.

She warms, leans into his touch, relief immediate from the gesture. Her body calms, her eyes close.

“Don’t cry, now,” he tells her by her head, mouth moving against her wet hair.

Slowly, the crying fades away. Another consequence of a fresh bond: she feels compelled to obey.

She knows it won’t always be like this. The more intense effects will wear off in a few weeks. But it still feels strange, to be so beholden to a stranger. Even if said stranger has been… rather strange. To say the least.

She has never known such odd care. Not from men, and certainly not from pirates. He continues to comfort her; his thumb rubs at her shoulders, his voice soft where he whispers for her to sleep.

And with that compulsion, her body succumbs to fatigue. She drifts into unconsciousness.

⟢❖⟣

Outside, Mitaka and Bridger whisper to themselves as they go about their nightly rotation after their first mate instructs them to pay no heed to anything coming from the captain’s quarters.

“Ye think the siren’ll kill us?”

“Nah.” Bridger kicks at the ship’s rail with confidence. “The captain wouldn’t let that happen.”

“If she don’t,” Mitaka muses, “it’ll be the Sky Walker, catchin’ up to us to make us pay for ownin’ a sea monster ‘thout payin’ our dues. _After_ we killed a Brethren pirate lord.”

“Doubt it, mate. Pryde was a right _bastard,_ an’ the captain knows what he’s up to. And ‘sides, sirens are good luck, y’know.” 

Mitaka spits out, but only into the open sea; they had manners. Kylo Ren ran a tight ship. 

“Sures hope so. Feels like we be needin’ it soon ‘nough.”

⟢❖⟣

Rey wakes again in the middle of the night.

This time, she can hear him snoring in his cot. His presence calms her, but she still cannot go back to sleep. Not knowing how far he is, and yearning for closeness.

( _For someone, anyone, to be with. For another siren, another creature, a friend.)_

She sees the human clothes — a simple white garment that she’s seen human women wear and wash in rivers — draped over a chair.

Putting two and two together, she stands up, very slowly, so the saltwater streams down her body quietly; her legs are wobbly, unsure of how to carry the rest of her landlocked form, but she manages with more than a few stumbles. 

She plucks herself out of the tub, bringing one leg and then the other over the rim. She figures out how to put on the clothes: she’d seen humans wear them often enough. 

The cloth is itchy, painful even, where her skin is raw the most: her arms and ankles. The rest of her does not fare well either, being sensitised and unused to the abrasion. The garment reaches down to her calves — a little loose everywhere, and smells a little of must — but the cold night air bites anyway, terribly more so because of the dampness from her wet, heavy hair. But she wears the garments nonetheless.

She has a feeling he would want her to.

The saltwater has not dried off of her skin when she pads to where he is sleeping, but she does not care. Gingerly, she sits at the floor next to his raised plank cot.

She takes a hand — carefully, slowly — from where it is folded on his torso, and unfolds it to dangle over the edge. His fingers are large, calloused. Marked with scars and dark ink, like the rest of him. So many stories. But so gentle, when they held her. She likes his hand.

She holds it as she folds herself on the floor, finally able to sleep.

⟢❖⟣

She wakes to the sound of his voice:

“Fuckin’ hell, _Rey—_ ”

She turns her head and he is peering at her from his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes; in a flash, he is swinging his legs over the side and standing and looking down at her. Something like displeasure crosses his features.

She feels immediately distressed as she looks up at his looming form against the grey dawn.

Is he angry? Has she done wrong?

Fear gains footing;

In the light of the early morning, she can see his bare skin; it is the kind of sea-crusted tan that comes from burning paleness, though not as pale as her. There are many scars on his bare torso, just like she glimpsed on his forearms, the day before. But in the dawn, he is clearer. His arms have the patterns of ink that pirate lords often have: she can see his emblem on his forearm (a bird: she thinks it’s a falcon), the brand of his port (another one: a firebird this time), and other symbols and writings on his skin. Scars, too — some old and raised and angry, and others nearly invisible but no less deep. He is _big;_ this, too, she notices. Chorded through with strength and muscle, he is more formidable than most men she has encountered.

She starts to tremble. 

For she has yet to know how he is when he is displeased with her.

Previous experience informs her how men can be, when they are displeased.

She wonders if she will survive it; the heartbreak of being hurt by someone that they are bonded to has damaged many a siren.

He scrubs a hand over his face. She feels grieved and confused and scared.

So when he suddenly crouches down and reaches for her, she flinches hard;

(In the past, men had a silver bar to push down her mouth. They had chains, and they had gags, and they had brute, unfeeling strength.)

When the blow doesn’t come, she opens her eyes.

She is curious about why his brows are drawn so deeply. Why he seems to only stare at her with such a pained look.

Slowly, he sits back on his haunches. 

“Rey,” he says, voice cracking with sleep and perhaps something else, “why are you on the floor?”

She turns away, cheeks burning. “Can’t sleep. Your...”

She looks at his hand. Then looks away again.

She is sad. For how much she might have upset him, when she only needed some form of contact that she might rest. 

She hears him blow a gusty exhale; 

Surely he is very displeased now.

She turns inward, into her elbow folded beneath her head, her hair sheltering her from what must be his thunderous expression. Her heart is cracking down the middle, fracturing at the thought of angering him so soon.

“You’re angry,” she speaks from where she hides her face from him.

( _Please don’t throw me away. Please don’t leave me…_ )

He huffs out a humourless laugh. “You could say that.”

She could cry at the ache, but she has cried too much the day before, and her eyes would bleed if she did so again.

But instead of an angry blow, she feels his arms on her body, working their way beneath her; the curve of her back, the corners of her legs. Suddenly, he is picking her up, slowly, gently, and placing her on his bed. 

She uncurls when she feels the downy, soft material on which she lies; when she looks at him, she is surprised. He kneels by the bed now, frowning down at her. There is softness where she had thought she saw anger, mere moments ago.

How very strange.

He licks his lips before speaking, brushing hair out of her eyes: “You thought I was angry at you.”

It’s not a question, but she frowns at it anyway. For the answer was yes, and there could be no other answer.

He seems to be thinking, staring at a point above her. It takes him a moment to respond. She sits up, leaning on her elbows to pay attention. Her eyes are quick to memorise; they roam his shoulders only once, and she has the image of his skin stamped into the back of her eyelids. Scars and faded markings, all of them. 

When finally he speaks, it is with a sigh, as he holds her hand to roll the sleeves up her forearms, parts of the cloth stuck to the gashes:

Her skin is the same as yesterday, but with stiff, white scabbing, shiny and taught across the rawness; she winces when he peels the sleeves off of wounds.

“This needs to be dressed,” he tells her, examining her arms. The ribbed, pink skin.

Rey blinks at him; she still does not understand.

When she opens her mouth, it wants to be a question: “You’re—but you’re angry.”

He frowns. Only glances at her, still seemingly taken to observing every inch of her arm. “I was. I am angry. But not at you.”

He punctuates this with a brief squeeze where he holds her hand.

Rey sighs.

It feels good. It feels very good. To be touched. To be bonded.

(For all her fears, she had never thought it could feel like this _._ A soft, curling pleasure at the simplest of touches; a falling inside her. Being at the mercy of relief and sensation...)

Soon, she is falling asleep again at his instruction, pulled as she is by a bone-deep exhaustion that she had not known she’d been carrying. 

⟢❖⟣

When she wakes, he is gone and the sun has hidden beneath the horizon again;

And around her arms is a pleasant, tingly sensation. She opens her eyes to find her forearms bandaged in linen… and beneath it, she can smell the clove oil and kelp. The linen is tight, but not uncomfortably so; it wraps around her arms, hiding her ribbed siren skin, without constricting her movements.

She feels a swell of something she knows not the name of;

She almost does not see the cured fish and bread on a tin plate, on the ground beside the cot where she lies. A whole mound of it, heaped and kept only from spilling by the sides of the plate and the passive tides on which they were sailing.

When she plucks the bread and bites her first mouthful, she tries hard to keep from crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Lou. :) Thank you for believing in this monsterfucking fic sjfkjdfkshdf your enthusiasm makes me all Emotional™.
> 
> And wow, I have never had a story pick up so fast??? Thank you for reading! 😭
> 
> And I apologise for the slow updates; I was ironing out Kylo's voice here. I'm finally happy with it now. :) 
> 
> Come talk 2 me about mermey & reylo on twitter: reyreyalltheway <3


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